13 February 2018

Review: When Light Left Us

When Light Left Us
by Leah Thomas


Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication Date: February 13, 2018

WHEN LIGHT LEFT US by Leah Thomas is a thrilling, contemporary novel that is incredibly hard to put down. When the father of Milo, Ana, and Hank Vasquez inexplicably deserted his family, the three siblings were suddenly left with a gaping hole in their lives. But in the darkness of their backyard one summer night, that hole was filled. A foreign, shimmering light entered into the three bodies of the Vasquez children and slowly took control of their actions. After doing irreversible damage on the three children, this light abandons them, much like their father. When the light left them, the children were forced them to embrace the things that made them human and learn to live again without the alien presence that they had become so familiar with.

WHEN LIGHT LEFT US took my breath away. Leah Thomas brilliantly captured the separate thoughts and personalities of three very different children while characterizing them in such a way that I forgot they weren’t actually real. The setting was designed in a way that made me feel like I too was in rural New Mexico. At its heart, WHEN LIGHT LEFT US is not an alien book, it is a coming-of-age story about how an alien presence forever changed the perspectives of a family. In the end, this is an utterly engrossing story that I never wanted to end.



No comments:

Post a Comment